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Children have the opportunity to be inspired by an exhibition of giant 'poetry balloons' inistalled in the gallery at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Art Center at Governors Island. Together they will explore the poetry and stories that come out of the great blue canopy of the earth's sky and them make books in the shape of blimps and float their own poetry upon them.

Based on his new book We Are Rivers, Richard Lewis and the Touchstone Center Theatre Ensemble will explore the life of a river, bringing it to life through dance and song. After the performance, we’ll make our own “river books” filled with the ever-changing waters of our thoughts and the world around us

For Halloween this year, world-renowned Monstrologist and Alienologist Johan Olander lectures on the secrets, eating habits, and various levels of friendliness of monsters and aliens. Afterward there will be a workshop during which visitors can observe and report on the odd life forms of our own imaginations. Johan Olander is author and illustrator of the best-selling books A Field Guide to Monsters and A Field Guide to Aliens.

Chrissie Gittins reads from her latest book of poems, The Humpback’s Wail, and shares the different ways in which she creates her poetry and writing. Gittins's poems have been called “imaginative snapshots taken with a quirky edge that appeals to children” (Pie Corbett). Gittins is the author of the poetry collections I Don’t Want an Avocado for an Uncle and Now You See Me, Now You… Her poems have been featured on BBC television and radio.

The ecological, political and economic uncertainties of our times frighten us, but also present us with a great creative possibility. This workshop will consider that which confines us as people and how to use writing to overcome these barriers. Drawing upon the work of key thinkers, poets and artists, and through a series of guided exercises, participants will assess and “puncture” their current practice, attempting to break open their writing.

This workshop focuses on the musical structures of poetry and the ways in which these structures create voice and meaning in a poem. Students will discuss poems with an eye and ear to the way music serves as a poetic muse, creating subject matter, and fostering a relationship between form and content. The students' primary goal in this study will be to produce original poetry with the purpose of finding their own music and voice within the poem.

Anne Waldman is the author of over 40 books and small press editions of poetry and poetics, including, most recently, The lovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment, a 700-page epic poem 30 years in the making. She is the Distinguished Professor of Poetics at Naropa University

Glyn Maxwell is the author of the poetry collections Out of the Rain (1992); Rest for the Wicked (1995), which was short-listed for both the Whitbread Poetry Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize; The Breakage (1998), and One Thousand Nights and Counting: Selected Poems (2011). He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and The New School.